Amid the cost, time frame and support from the community, boosters and detractors alike are asking how feasible is a new CSU stadium?

Jan. 14, 2012

courtesy of CSU Athletics

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When CSU President Tony Frank first publicly backed the idea of a new on-campus football stadium late last year, Fort Collins residents started listening.

But it wasn't until new Athletic Director Jack Graham put a hoped-for opening date out there - Sept. 6, 2014 - that people sat up and took real notice.

So, the Coloradoan set out to answer a question: How long does it actually take to build a football stadium from scratch? The answer: Anywhere from years to just months, and usually some combination of both.

At Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, for instance, the process took both years and months, said assistant athletic director Katrina McCormack.

She said the university started talking about building a stadium in 2001. Three presidents, three athletic directors and two football coaches later, FAU has one of the newest football stadiums in America, the 30,000-seat FAU Stadium.

The $70 million stadium opened Oct. 15, after just 11 months of construction.

"It has completely transformed the campus," McCormack said. "There's a spirit and liveliness around campus that wasn't there before."

McCormack said FAU spent a decade planning for the stadium, laying in utilities to what had been an old military runway and building alumni and community support. She said the team had previously played in a rented high school field and used the time it took to arrange financing to prepare the site. That way, once the money was lined up, the project was shovel-ready.

"A lot of what held us up was lack of an alumni base," she said. "Once the loan was approved, the ground was broken and they ran from that first day until it was open."

Unlike CSU's existing Hughes Stadium, which is built of dirt and concrete, McCormack said FAU's stadium was built from steel, shortening the construction process.

New or reuse?

Hughes Stadium took about 16 months to build, said John Hirn, the unofficial CSU Athletics historian and the author of the CSU sports history book "From Aggies to Rams." He said ground was broken for Hughes on May 8, 1967, and the first game was played there Sept. 28, 1968. Design and preparation for the stadium began in earnest in September 1966, he said.

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"That was in the late 1960s, but you have to think the EPA and many other factors were not as involved as they would be today," Hirn said.

Many universities choose to renovate their existing stadiums, rather than build from scratch. That can speed up the process because an expansion requires little new land by generally maintaining the stadium's existing footprint.

Oklahoma State University, for instance, followed that route in expanding what's now known as Boone Pickens Stadium. OSU graduate and oilman Pickens in 2003 gave the university $20 million for a stadium expansion, and then kicked in $165 million more in 2005.

His gifts and an OSU fundraising campaign led to a multi-phase renovation that saw expansions in 2004, 2006 and then 2009. The stadium now seats 60,000, up from 44,700 during construction, university officials said. The expansion saw the addition of a variety of amenities, including luxury boxes, a training table and football team headquarters.

"While Boone Pickens Stadium is not entirely new, it looks vastly different when you compare old and new photos. The fašade was completely changed and the west end zone, which previously stood alone, was connected to the rest of the facility," said Gary Shutt, OSU's spokesman.

As part of the stadium project and Picken's gifts, OSU is preparing to create an athletic village to house student athletes.

Whether a stadium includes such amenities can significantly lengthen its design and construction timeline. While the FAU stadium includes an open-air tiki bar, it doesn't contain housing or other non-athletics uses, McCormack said.

CSU's Frank has said he envisions a stadium that's much more than just a place to play football. In a letter to the Fort Collins City Council, Frank said a stadium could include an alumni center, and also noted that some stadiums have residence halls built into them.

Building in amenities

The University of Central Florida, for instance, made a new stadium and indoor arena part of what administrators call an athletic village, which includes 2,000 beds of student housing along with dining areas and stores.

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UCF played football games at the Citrus Bowl in nearby Orlando but decided to build a stadium on campus to capture the kind of game-day energy Frank and Graham say CSU is lacking.

UCF formally decided to build the stadium in 2005, took out the necessary loans in August 2006 and opened it fall 2007. Bill Merck, UCF's vice president for administration and finance, said the university initially wanted to build a traditional poured-in-place concrete stadium but saw estimates well above $100 million. That's when they, like FAU, took a look at steel.

Bright House Networks Stadium, which seats 45,000 fans, cost $64 million and opened to a sellout crowd, Merck said. He said the steel frame stadium is "reasonably bare bones" but still fan-friendly, and was wrapped with $1 million in bricks to ensure that it fit with the rest of the campus and didn't look too industrial.

"You want it to look nice because it's going to be sitting there for years," he said.

Meerck said the university spent a lot of time addressing concerns raised by neighbors about potential sites, one of which was close to neighborhoods and opposed by nearby residents.

He said the university made its case to the public that the stadium wouldn't dramatically change neighborhoods, in part by offering free on-campus parking on game days and providing shuttle buses from student housing areas.

Merck said he personally attended 22 public meetings, hearings and neighborhood discussions on the proposal.

"It was all about communication - talk, talk, talk," Merck said. "I think it was very important for us to meet with all those groups ... and listen to their input."

He said the university took pains to install highly directional lighting, which means stadium lights focus on the field and not the surrounding neighborhoods, and did the same for the sound systems. He said once the stadium opened, he, his wife and a campus police officer took a drive into the nearby neighborhoods.

"You could barely hear it. We never got any complaints about noise once we opened the stadium," he said.

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Public process

Frank has promised an exhaustive public process for developing CSU's proposed stadium. He recently appointed a 15-member committee to advise him on the stadium proposal, with its first meeting set for Jan. 31.

"A project of this scope inevitably generates concern and some level of controversy, and it's not in the culture of a university to pursue such a project without careful consideration and input," Frank told City Council members in an email. "Jack (Graham) has established a very aggressive personal timeline for raising the funds, constructing and opening such a stadium. I support him in pushing the project forward, and without his passion and vision, I doubt there's a chance to be successful with such a project."

In his memo to the council, Frank said it's unwise to speculate about potential stadium locations until the committee has a chance to begin its work, but referred to a map of potential stadium sites published in the Coloradoan as containing "considerable inaccuracy."

And he said that while no decisions have been made on whether a stadium will be built, Frank said it's not a good idea to discuss whether CSU should build a stadium without laying some basic groundwork about a location, design or cost. Graham has publicly suggested a $100 million to $200 million pricetag.

"I think that the problems with such a completely linear decision making approach are obvious: We can't discuss conceptual design accurately without knowing something of location, we can't assess fund raising very effectively without some level of conceptual design, and I'm not sure how we could really have any sort of informed discussion without some level of information on what we're discussing," Frank wrote. "Throughout the process, and on all the issues noted above, we are building in significant opportunity for public comment and involvement."

In order to build a stadium, CSU will have to alter its published master plan and get approval from its governing board, the same process that UCF followed, Merck said. Asked to give some advice to any university building an on-campus stadium from scratch, Merck said it's important to ensure there's "no surprises" for the public, students or potential neighbors.

And he said getting the financing properly arranged is key. Bright House Networks Stadium is paying for itself through ticket sales and naming rights, he said, but major donors didn't step forward.

"Don't count on big donors. And don't count on getting a big fee from students," he said. "That won't go over well."

Frank said he expects CSU will be able to build the stadium with help from private donors and by selling the naming rights. Frank said additional football ticket sales will help cover the costs of a new coach and athletic director.

"We will not use state-appropriated funds or tuition revenue on a stadium," Frank told the council. "I cannot imagine taking any type of tax request forward given the fiscal climate, and I don't see that climate changing during the time we'll be pursuing the project."